Video: Life in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Pretty much every modern survivalist I can think of needs to bow down before Heimo Korth. In 1975, the 20-year-old left Wisconsin to live off the land in what would become Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but instead of going all McCandless like so many others, he actually managed to survive and even thrive as a hunter, trapper, and provider for a wife and two daughters raised in the Alaskan bush. Now, his is the last family living full-time on the land.

His cousin, BACKPACKER contributor James Campbell, wrote the book The Last Frontiersman about him in 2004, and now Vice.tv is following up on Heimo in their online video series Far Out: Heimo's Arctic Refuge. It's worth suffering the annoying hipster host to see how Korth has carved a near-comfortable existence in one of the harshest environments on Earth. This is a man who can casually mention shooting a bear in his yard, but who has also paid a heavy price for following his bliss on the Alaskan frontier far from help of any kind: His first daughter fell through thin ice and drowned.